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Reflections
Science says that mirrors reflect the light that that our body gives, which is why we see ourselves in the mirrors, but what if they’re wrong? I’ll tell you why I think this way. A few months ago, I had an interesting experience with mirrors, something that changed the way I think about them. After months of thinking I believe people should know of this. :First, I don't think science says that mirrors work that way. Bodies don't give off light. Nothing about that theory really makes sense. http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/mirror2.htm ' :'Don't start with an introduction. Start by starting the story. ' The date was February 12 of 2012. On that particular day, I was going through a stressful time, you see, in that night I was supposed to do a important speech for my university, and a lot of my friends and family would be there. So imagine me wandering around my house like a madman trying to organize the speech and myself, and when I go to wash my face in the bathroom to calm down, the mirror starts acting weird. :'We shouldn't have to imagine it. You should be showing it. What you're doing is passive story-telling. It reads more like a summary, like something you would tell a friend, when it should read like a story. :Start by SHOWING, don't just tell, that the character is nervous and has a speech. This is a first-person narrative, so get inside of the character. Describe them walking around the house, give us dialogue of them rehearsing their speech. What are things people do and feel when they're nervous? Have the character do those things. You can show all of this information pretty easily and it's much more engaging. For most people it wouldn’t be noticeable, but I was particularly stressed at that time, so anything out of the ordinary stuck out on me like a sore thumb. You see, My reflection, in a matter of speaking, was delayed. it was really hard to notice. But, I could see that it was acting in a delayed manner, It was just a few milliseconds, and because I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just shrugged it off for a few minutes, but then it hit me, that’s not normal, mirrors aren’t supposed to act delayed! :Here you have a few problems. The biggest is repetition. You tell us three times in the space of a few sentences that the reflection is delayed. You only need to say it once. And you really don't need to tell us that isn't normal. Again, all you're doing is telling. Don't just say the reflection is delayed. Show us. Write the movement the character made, them catching the delay. Much less important, because it's kind of nitpicky, is the logic of all of this. Personaly, when I'm stressed I don't become hyper-aware, I'm more distracted. But, everybody's different, I can believe that someone would be like that. It's harder to buy that they can perceive a delay of milliseconds. It's also weird that the character just sticks around the bathroom for minutes. Either have him figure it out quicker or have him leave, then come back. I quickly looked back into the mirror, and everything seemed normal, yet not..I noticed something, my eyes, they were different, it..it...it’s hard to explain, the eyes weren’t from me. The eyes were from something, no, someone else, and it was scared… :You need this image to be strong. It's the first major image of your story and it's going to serve as a hook. You need to make people wonder what's up the with the eyes. Your image right now is very weak. You don't describe anything. First, you need an emotional base. Give us some of the character's anxiety and confusion, then really describe what these eyes look like. Don't just tell us the character is scared. Describe what he's feeling internally, Seeing those eyes made me slowly back away from the mirror, close my bathroom door and leave my home. I knew I wasn’t going back inside, so I just go to a starbucks, finish my speech, go to the university and just be done with it. A few hours later, after being '''congratulated on my speech and '''getting '''half drunk '''at a party, I decide to go back to my house, telling myself that the stress made me see things that weren’t there. Okay, the speech seems to be completely inconsequential. 'Maybe it comes in later, but from what I see, it's completely pointless. Unless you can justify it, don't include it. Also, you need to keep your tenses consistent. You keep pinballing back and forth between past and present tense. It's really bad. ' When I looked into the mirror everything seemed normal again, thinking it was just the stress. I wash my face and I go to sleep. The next few days pass normally, I forget about that whole incident, so when I go wash my face in the morning to wake up, and I see my mirror acting weird again, I got pissed, and scared. You see, it was morning and the bathroom was full of light, but on the mirror, it looked like it was night, and my reflection, disappeared. What does that mean? How does it look like night? Also, saying "pissed" and "scared" means nothing. Why would anyone be pissed by this. That's a weird reaction. Again, go deeper than scared. What do people do and feel when they're scared. At this point I was getting quite startled. Thinking maybe it was only my bathroom mirror, I rush to my bedroom, and to my disdain, find the same results on the closet mirror. After gathering some courage I rush in to examine this phenomenon, and I notice something that will haunt me for all my life. You see, there was something inside the mirror, something in the corner of my eye... I don’t know exactly how to describe it, as everytime I tried to focus on it I would get an earsplitting headache, but there it was, from what I could see, it had a humanoid shape, and it seemed to be relaxed, his body language told me that anyway. At that point I was getting infuriated by this dilemma, so I got the first object I could find, and threw it at the mirror, completely shattering it. Well, it was supposed to shatter anyway, but to my complete surprise, it went inside the mirror. I was frozen on the spot, my mind thinking millions and millions of reasons as to why this could’ve happened, I notice one good thing that my hasty decision had led me, the humanoid figure was gone. With him gone my curiosity started to grow, so I decide to investigate the cause of this phenomenon. The first I try is throwing another object thru the mirror, and to my delight, I found out the object passed to the other side too. This discovery started to excite me, just the thought of finding some kind of portal, leading to some unknown(but slightly familiar) place, was incredibly exciting. Knowing that I would not sleep before finding out more about this thing, I decide to test the way the portal works myself. Firstly I touched the mirror, and it felt cool, but slightly liquid, like touching water. Knowing that if I didn’t do this in a swift manner, my courage would fail on me, I run to the mirror, and jump to it. You would not the understand the feeling, like every cell of mine became liquid for a second, then materialized again. Its hard to explain, I’ll just say it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. I come into the other side in a quite messy manner, with rolling into the wall on that room. After shrugging off and examining any painful areas, I start observing how the other side looks like. It was a living room of some sorts, with a flowery couch and an old tv in a table. The room itself had a smell of vanilla in the air, exactly like my grandmother’s house. I shout in realization that this place is my grandma’s house, but that would be impossible, since my grandma died in a fire on her home years ago…. In a rush I quickly go to her bedroom, and to my utter surprise, I see her sleeping peacefully on her rickety bed. I was surprised and happy that I could see my granny again, but as I approach her, I see something that shocks me. You see, she had a calendar in her bedroom, and the year in it was 2000.. It was impossible, but there I was, watching my grandma from the year 2000! Oh I would pay to see my face on that moment. I still wasn’t fully grasping the concept that my mirror in my bedroom just brought me 12 years back in the past, right on my grandma’s house. I was stunned by this discovery, but sadly I knew I couldn’t just talk to my grandma at this time, even if I become able to prove to her that I’m her grandson, I would be altering the course of time itself, and that is not something I should try without fair experimenting.. I sadly back away from her bedroom, and with a sigh of happiness, I walk back to that living room mirror that she had. To my horror I noticed, that I could see myself in the mirror, whatever phenomenon had let me time travel, wasn’t working anymore. I was trapped in the past… I touch the mirror expecting myself being able to go thru it, but it solid, the cold feeling of water was not present anymore. At that point, I was starting to panic, the thought of being stuck in the past was becoming more and more real in my mind. And then I see something else, you see, that humanoid thing was back, watching me, it was the reason I was stuck in here, I try to communicate with it, try to let me back in my time, but it’s just there, watching me, laughing at me, like this was just a practical joke to him. All my time travel related memories came back to me, and I knew that I had to leave that place, if my grandma notices me time could be seriously altered, and I would create a paradox around myself, which is never a good thing. From that day on, I lived for years on this nostalgic world, reliving things that happened. Sometimes I would try to stop an event from happening, but it seemed that every time that thought crossed my mind, that man, or thing if you wanna call it, would mysteriously appear in my area of vision, and with him, that earsplitting headache, which would only stop if I ran away from him, and with that on I restarted my life, everything that was related to me, was off limits. I was haunted by my past for years on time, cursed to relive the past as someone else… I started to investigate around the internet, and I found out some people that had the same predicament as me, and we all decide to meet after months of comparing our times and knowledge from it, or a we used to call him over there, Chrono. We all decided to meet in a secluded abandoned house, so that no one would find out what we discussed. There group was consisted of, Autumn, Castiel, Joshua, and me. We all were displaced in time around the same year, with me being the latest person snatched. We all shared the same knowledge of Chrono, and for a while we tried to find ways to get back to our time, but as months passed, we eventually started to get accustomed with our lives in the past, everyone except Castiel anyways. He started to get more obsessed with Chrono over the months, and in one of our meetings, he barged in our meeting spot shouting,”I’m so close to finding our way back! But he knows, he’s coming, he’s coming for me!” We were rather shocked with his outrage, and I asked for an explanation, but all he said was something about being bigger than just time travel, and suddenly, he starts shouting in pain. He runs to the middle of the room, and the group gets away from him. He falls to the ground writhing in pain, and we watch in horror as he levitates up, and starts, shrinking, and the smaller he got, the more he screamed in pain, until pop, he was gone. In horror I search for the cause of this, and I see Chrono, right on the corner of the room, smiling and disappearing back to where he normally goes. After that the group separates and vows to never speak of this again. And we live on with our cursed lives, until 3 months ago. You see, Autumn called me that day, and she said that in the next week, she would be back to her time from where she was snatched. I was happy that she would finally be able to live a better life, until I heard what she said next. “I saw Chrono today in my mirror..” I wasn’t fazed at that statement, as Chrono can be sometimes seen when I look in a mirror, I think she knew that too, as she continued saying “He wasn’t just observing this time, this time, he was walking to me” I warn her that its only her imagination, and that she should calm down, since she’ll be able to live an actual life soon. My words seemed to have affected her, as she seemed to have calmed down. We talked about our lives for a bit, “Thanks for all your help thru the years….” Those were her last words as I hung up. One week later, and I discover that she too had disappeared, I’m afraid that whatever happened to Castiel also happened to her, so I try to contact anyone that had synced up to their normal times. They were all gone…. I write this as of now, since you see, in one month I’ll be back to my real time. But as I watched my mirror, I saw Chronos watching me, smiling what appeared to be his teeth. He knew I didn’t have much time, as of the end of this writing, it will be one hour until I die. My last resort is to try to go to the apartment and warn my past self of this. But if you are reading this, I’m probably gone, or worse. Please, I beg of you, be careful of mirrors, they don’t reflect the light that refracts off us, that’s just an illusion he created. Mirrors are portals, they can bring you thru time and space, and maybe dimensions even, heh, that would explain my first encounter with mirrors...